A woman with a mysterious disease that would not allow her to stop growing has passed away on Monday. During her teenager years, 34-year-old Tanya Angus was a stunning model at 5 ft 8 inches. When she died she was 7 ft 2 inches and weighed approximately 400 pounds reported news.com.au.
Angus suffered from gigantism or acromegaly and died from an apparent tear in her heart, reported the Associated Press. She was diagnosed with the disease at 22. For the next decade she grew so much that she had to use custom utensils and had to get around in a motorized wheelchair reported the AP.
"The disorder affected just about everything for Angus. She couldn't pull even the largest of shirts over her head, because she couldn't fit through the collar. She needed specially made shoes, and jewelers stretched her rings to size 20," reported news.com.au
Angus started to appear on tv speaking out about her condition. The condition left her face disfigured and in pain and was caused by the release of too much growth hormone caused by a tumor in her pituitary gland that was not cancerous.
"'Mom, I don't know why I got it,'" Karen Strutynski her mother reported her Angus said to news.com.au . "'But I guess God decided that I could handle it.'"
Strutynski said that peoplee were very cruel to her daughter when she went to the media but Angus became an advocate for those that also have the disease and would correspond with other people that also suffered from it from around the world.
Angus' mother plans to keep up her website and still correspond with others suffering from the disease to help them.
"We can't let it end. It's just too important," Mr Strutynski said, to news.com.au."We can't just let it die with Tanya."
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
